From the archive: Pinfold Street

We are looking at the junction of Pinfold Street (left) and Townhead Street in 1912. No prizes for guessing the main object of the piece - what a great building dominates the view; the showroom of the The Yorkshire Motor Car Co Ltd. On the right are the new council flats on Townhead Street, one of the earliest social housing schemes in the city, started around 1904. Pinfold Street to the left is said to have been home to the first Sheffield Town Hall in the seventeenth century. This is all about the building in 1912 though; I doubt whatever is coming soon will match its predecessor somehow. On the roof of the car showroom we can see the engine room of a lift that carried cars between floors - one of the first such operations in the city. I’m not at all interested in cars generally, but Sheffield has a varied and interesting early motoring history, which may surprise some. Cars were made here - most famously the Sheffield Simplex (of which there is an example in Kelham Island Museum), but many large businesses were here selling cars too. Most of all this was a really striking building - even I would have stopped and marvelled at the cars on view 114 years ago too!